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Fame and Fire

Fame and Fire

VIEWPOINT

by Eldon Griffiths

Forget apple pie. Seen from abroad, political theater has become the trademark of America and melodrama the brand name of California

I say this in the context of the administration’s growing concern about the lousy image of the United States that’s being painted in the rest of thee world. Two recent developments accentuate this: the perception among many foreigners that politics in Washington is more and more a theater of the absurd and the coincidence of California’s devastating fires and the simultaneous emergence of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor.

Start with the dramas in Washington. As depicted by the overseas media, U.S. government over the past 30 years has been characterized by a series of Gilbert & Sullivan type operas starring, among others, Richard Nixon, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Gary Condit and Jesse Ventura.

Corporate America, meanwhile, has recently staged “School for Scandal” at Enron, who-dun-nits in the $7 trillion mutual fund industry, and Dick Grasso in “Billionaires Row,” a.k.a. the New York Stock exchange. Last week, a New York court put on a colorized remake of “Sea & Sardinia,” this time featuring Denis Kozlowski on location in Italy, at shareholder expense, with a life-sized birthday cake in the shape of his bosomy wife, the First Lady of Tyco.

Turn now to California where events have combined to merge the most spectacular wild fires in a generation with the simultaneous launch of Terminator II as our governor.

Three out of every five of the planet’s TV viewers outside America are estimated to have watched Gov.-elect Arnie Schwarzenegger make his debut on the Capitol Steps against a background of California burning. His world-famous wooden mug flashed onto foreign screens as the cameras panned out across an inferno of shooting flames and orange smoke, billowing across a landscape that looked just like the forested mountains of his native Austria (where one of Europe’s golden oldies, “Sound of Music,” was filmed).

Likewise, for an estimated billion viewers in Asia, there were some Nintendo moments. First, Arnie arm in arm with the Speaker of the House of Representatives; next, a flash of flames and smoke; then, lo and behold, a guided missile destroyer steaming to the rescue while,get this,the USS Stennis, a nuclear aircraft carrier, turns around and ploughs back toward California with 800 sailors in flak suits ready to fight for God, country and by implication for Arnie, as they were landed to beat back the flames that threatened San Diego.

No head of state or government in my lifetime has ever erupted onto the world stage in so spectacular a fashion as our new governor. Talk about a baptism of fire. That mythical bird, the Phoenix, looks like a mere canary in comparison with Schwarzenegger emerging out of the smoke of California burning.

Yet dramas “butter no parsnips” if you know that old English one-liner, which means that you need more than dressing (or hype) to achieve a palatable result. Let’s therefore ask the question: Will the extra oomph that the fires fortuitously added to Arnie’s original fame as America and the world’s current brightest political shooting star help or hinder him as he buckles down to the job of cleaning up the mess in Sacramento?

The new guv has made a good start. I am impressed by the bipartisan manner in which he’s reached out to Congress, as well as the White House, by the methodical way in which he’s recruiting talent from all parties and none as he builds his administration; most of all by his not talking too much, keeping his cards close to his chest so as to have something big and inspiring (I hope) to share with us when he formally takes office.

But will Arnie’s fame translate into the political capital he’s going to need to shift the roadblocks that stand in the way of a fresh start and true reform in Sacramento? Will shock and awe be enough to overcome the self interest and self importance of those denizens of the state Legislature whose big spending, big borrowing and big taxing habits have landed us in a deficit that’s larger than the GDPs of most nations?

My worry is that the melodrama of our new governor’s pyrotechnical launch may have raised the expectations of many of those who voted for him to still higher,and more unrealizable,levels.

I wish him well. Who doesn’t? But I hope he heeds the advice of another great Hollywood star, Charlton Heston, who once observed, in a private conversation, “To find a path across the real Red Sea, you need a lot bigger guy than Moses. Miracles are what are called for, and only one guy can do that. God.”

Griffiths, a resident of Laguna Niguel, is an author, lecturer, journalist and former member of the British House of Commons.

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